The present disclosure relates to a fabric inspection device that detects defects in images of the same pattern recorded repeatedly with a predetermined pitch on a continuous recording sheet, and to an ink-jet printing device incorporating such a fabric inspection device.
As a method for printing on continuous cloth, there are known a direct printing method, in which an image is printed directly on a material on an ink-jet printer, and a transfer printing method, in which an image is printed on special paper (transfer paper) on an ink-jet printer having disperse dye ink (sublimation ink) and then the ink on the transfer paper is evaporated on a thermal transfer device so that only the ink permeates a material (mainly polyester).
The cloth having undergone printing processing as described above is usually passed through an inspection step to check for image defects. Although, on conventional fabric inspection devices, the cloth having undergone printing processing is conveyed automatically, inspection is carried out visually; that is, there is no device available for checking image defects automatically with respect to the whole range of cloth. Thus, image defects are overlooked, resulting in output of low quality printed articles.
To avoid that, there have been proposed methods for automatically checking defects on cloth. For example, there is known an automatic fabric inspection device that determines, when a woven fabric as an inspection target is imaged with an imaging means and the level of the image signal acquired as the result of the imaging is out of the permissible range, that there are defects on the woven fabric. There is also known a correction value acquiring method that acquires correction values for individual recording elements by use of a reading device having a resolution lower than the resolution of the recording elements.
There is also known an image inspection device that stores a reference image and an inspection image and that detects a difference based on color differences of an RGB image while performing image inspection processing with first data of the reference image and second data of the inspection image associated with each other at the pixel level.